Kentucky/Oregon wrap-up

Tonight had the feeling of a baseball game that endures a couple of rain delays and then goes into extra innings; the home team winds up winning, but nobody is there to see it.

Clinton probably won the night on media narrative, and the net effect of her larger-than-expected margin in Kentucky was to deny Obama the ability to put an exclamation point on the evening and declare a climactic finish to the primary campaign. Meanwhile, Obama’s larger-than-expected margin in Oregon denied Clinton her last opportunity to dramatically alter the balance of the status quo, which leads inexorably to an Obama nomination.

By my math, Obama will win about 41 pledged delegates in the remaining primaries, and 23 add-on super delegates at state conventions to be held over the next month. Even if Florida and Clinton were seated fully, Obama should be sitting on about 2,156 delegates a week or so into June, leaving him 53 short of the 2,209 he’d need to officially clinch the nomination. Between the undeclared superdelegates (excluding add-ons, but including Michigan and Florida) and the undeclared Edwards delegates, there are about 222 delegates that remain in play. Obama only needs 24 percent of those delegates to declare for him to clinch an absolute majority:

Current Pledged Delegates    1655.5Current Superdelegates        304.5FL/MI Pledged Delegates       122FL/MI Superdelegates           10------------------------------------Current Total                2092Projected Pledged Delegates    41Projected Add-On Delegates     23-----------------------------------Projected June Total         2156Needed to Win                2209Magic Number                   53Delegates in Play*            222Percent Needed to Clinch       24%*Remaining superdelegates, excluding add-ons,plus remaining Edwards delegates.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.

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